Articles - From the Vicar

Dear Friends

I knew that I was getting older when our sons started saying that the years were flying by! Another year has nearly gone and the first decade of the new century is nearly over. I have a theory on the much discussed topic of time flying. I am sure that to a butterfly that only lives for a day, one day seems like a lifetime. So I think that our experience of time may depend on the overall amount of it that we have lived through. When we are only one year old another year is as long as the whole of our life so far, and so will seem very long indeed. However, as we get older each year that we live through is a smaller and smaller part of the whole of our experience, and so seems to go by quicker and quicker.

What has all this to do with the approach of Christmas? Perhaps not a lot. However, it is now over two thousand years since the mysterious and wonderful events around Christ's birth took place. Each year we get further and further away from it in time. Our society also seems to be getting further and further away from it in spirit as well. People seem to think that something so long ago can't be relevant to us today and is just a sentimental nativity play for children. Two thousand years seems like a very long time relative to our lives. It is also just about as long as the written history of the western world. But when we compare it to the very many tens of thousands of years of our ancestors before that, then the first Christmas is actually quite a recent event. When we compare it to the billions of years of life itself on this planet, then it seems like it happened only yesterday. It all depends on our perspective.

Having said all that, Christians celebrate Christmas not as a remote (or recent) event in the past that is getting further and further away from us. It is relevant to us because it celebrates the birth of the One who is with us each and every day of our lives. Our prayer each year at Christmastide is "be born in us today". And as we seek to open ourselves to him through our praying and our serving he is being reborn day by day within us. Our lives may seem to be as unlikely a place for that to happen as the stable was in Bethlehem, but that is all part of the wonder of the story, the wonder of God's grace. For Christians, Christmas can be not just a past event but a present reality. As the psalmist writes "Today is the day of salvation".

Wishing you a joyful Christmas

David

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